<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">SOFTWARE EASES LOADING OF HAZARDOUS CARGOEDISON, N.J. - Sea-Land Service Inc. has created a </div>

SOFTWARE EASES LOADING OF HAZARDOUS CARGOEDISON, N.J. - Sea-Land Service Inc. has created a

<div>SOFTWARE EASES LOADINGOF HAZARDOUS CARGOEDISON, N.J. - Sea-Land Service Inc. has created a software program to help shippers determine what kinds of hazardous cargo can be shipped in the same container.The Sea-Check program provides a user list showing the compatibility of up to 20 different kinds of hazardous cargo that can be loaded into a freight container.The program was developed by a team of Sea-Land computer specialists headed by Mike Augustyniak, manager of bulk/hazardous commodities."I used to spend an average of 30 minutes leafing through various guidebooks to get the information I need to properly stow hazardous cargo," said Wim...

SOFTWARE EASES LOADING OF HAZARDOUS CARGOEDISON, N.J. - Sea-Land Service Inc. has created a software program to help shippers determine what kinds of hazardous cargo can be shipped in the same container. The Sea-Check program provides a user list showing the compatibility of up to 20 different kinds of hazardous cargo that can be loaded into a freight container. The program was developed by a team of Sea-Land computer specialists headed by Mike Augustyniak, manager of bulk/hazardous commodities. "I used to spend an average of 30 minutes leafing through various guidebooks to get the information I need to properly stow hazardous cargo," said Wim Braams, Sea-Land's manager of hazardous cargo in Rotterdam. He said the Sea-Check program cuts search time to about 20 seconds. IMPEX LOGISTICS UNVEILS TRANSPORTATION DATA NET COLUMBUS, Ohio - A computerized system that ties all players in a company's transportation and distribution system together in a digital net is just on the market from Impex Logistics Inc. Called the Worldwide Information Network and Documentation (Wind) system, the product is designed to automate cargo tracking, management and administration. Wind's software architecture is flexible enough to be able to work in different computer environments at the same time, Columbus, Ohio-based Impex claimed. Working in tandem with Wind is EDI/X, a program that can translate between a wide variety of paperless trading standards, or even proprietary electronic communications standards developed by specific companies. Wind is designed to work domestically and internationally, Impex said.

Transport, Trade and Regulation News

TRANS / TECH BRIEFS

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Beginning in September, the joint service will make added stops at Aarhus in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as the last three European calls. </div>

Beginning in September, the joint service will make added stops at Aarhus in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as the last three European calls.

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<div class="phx-topic">The Gemini Cooperation is adding three new calls on a joint Asia-Europe container service as port congestion in Northern Europe challenges the hub-and-spoke model championed by the shipping alliance. Gemini partners Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will change port rotations for their respective AE5 and NE4 services from Asia to “address fluctuating port congestion in Europe and ensure more consistent delivery,” Hapag-Lloyd said in an advisory Tuesday. The original European rotation of the AE5/NE4 only included London Gateway and Germany’s Bremerhaven and Hamburg ports. Along with those existing calls, the services from September will make added stops at Aarhus in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as their last three European calls. Aarhus and Gothenburg had been previously served by Gemini using a shuttle service for transshipping from Bremerhaven. The changes announced Tuesday include the AE5/NE4 services calling Hamburg before Bremerhaven. While the Gemini partners have insisted their hub-and-spoke network could maintain reliable schedules and avoid blank sailings, Maersk said in a separate advisory Tuesday it was just as easy to unwind the network “to address challenges, predicted or not.” It added that the shuttle vessels serving Aarhus will be redeployed to “locations with an increased disruption risk to our customers’ business.” Since April, Europe has experienced bouts of port congestion because of strong import demand, changes in container alliance structures and poor schedule reliability due to the ongoing longer transits around southern Africa. Other ocean carriers have <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ocean-carriers-adjust-calls-as-congestion-chokes-european-hubs-6037668">had to switch their European port rotations</a> to mitigate delays. <h3>Busy spring at Hamburg </h3>Hamburg, one of the harder-hit ports, saw an uptick in ship calls and vessel sizes through spring, according to data from Sea-web, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S&amp;P Global. During April, 416 container ships called the port, Sea-web data shows, with total vessel capacity reaching 1.83 million TEUs, the highest in 12 months. In May, 421 container ships called Hamburg, totaling 1.8 million TEUs in capacity. Germany’s HHLA, which operates three of Hamburg’s container terminals, is seeing ships wait between one and four days for an open berth as the “line-up is congested with late-arriving vessels,” ocean carrier HMM said in a customer advisory update. The terminals are operating at 75% to 80% capacity. Ongoing capital projects at Hamburg terminals may also be impacting handling efficiency. HHLA had to reduce the size of one berth at a Hamburg terminal due to construction of new ship-to-shore cranes. Another HHLA terminal is constructing two additional container yards this summer, which won’t be completed until next year. The terminal is also testing automated guide vehicles for moving containers. The tests are starting out on smaller ships, with a full rollout to all the berths in late 2025. Contact Michael Angell at <a href="mailto:michael.angell@spglobal.com">michael.angell@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

The Gemini Cooperation is adding three new calls on a joint Asia-Europe container service as port congestion in Northern Europe challenges the hub-and-spoke model championed by the shipping alliance. Gemini partners Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will change port rotations for their respective AE5 and NE4 services from Asia to “address fluctuating port congestion in Europe and ensure more consistent delivery,” Hapag-Lloyd said in an advisory Tuesday. The original European rotation of the AE5/NE4 only included London Gateway and Germany’s Bremerhaven and Hamburg ports. Along with those existing calls, the services from September will make added stops at Aarhus in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as their last three European calls. Aarhus and Gothenburg had been previously served by Gemini using a shuttle service for transshipping from Bremerhaven. The changes announced Tuesday include the AE5/NE4 services calling Hamburg before Bremerhaven. While the Gemini partners have insisted their hub-and-spoke network could maintain reliable schedules and avoid blank sailings, Maersk said in a separate advisory Tuesday it was just as easy to unwind the network “to address challenges, predicted or not.” It added that the shuttle vessels serving Aarhus will be redeployed to “locations with an increased disruption risk to our customers’ business.” Since April, Europe has experienced bouts of port congestion because of strong import demand, changes in container alliance structures and poor schedule reliability due to the ongoing longer transits around southern Africa. Other ocean carriers have had to switch their European port rotations to mitigate delays. Busy spring at Hamburg Hamburg, one of the harder-hit ports, saw an uptick in ship calls and vessel sizes through spring, according to data from Sea-web, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global. During April, 416 container ships called the port, Sea-web data shows, with total vessel capacity reaching 1.83 million TEUs, the highest in 12 months. In May, 421 container ships called Hamburg, totaling 1.8 million TEUs in capacity. Germany’s HHLA, which operates three of Hamburg’s container terminals, is seeing ships wait between one and four days for an open berth as the “line-up is congested with late-arriving vessels,” ocean carrier HMM said in a customer advisory update. The terminals are operating at 75% to 80% capacity. Ongoing capital projects at Hamburg terminals may also be impacting handling efficiency. HHLA had to reduce the size of one berth at a Hamburg terminal due to construction of new ship-to-shore cranes. Another HHLA terminal is constructing two additional container yards this summer, which won’t be completed until next year. The terminal is also testing automated guide vehicles for moving containers. The tests are starting out on smaller ships, with a full rollout to all the berths in late 2025. Contact Michael Angell at michael.angell@spglobal.com .

Maritime

Container Shipping News

Port News

Asia-Europe

International ports

Container lines

Europe’s port congestion forcing Gemini to switch up Asia service

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">The recent death of FedEx founder Fred Smith presents an opportunity to compare his contributions to global supply chains with another visionary, Malcom McLean, the father of containerization. </div>

The recent death of FedEx founder Fred Smith presents an opportunity to compare his contributions to global supply chains with another visionary, Malcom McLean, the father of containerization.

<div class="phx-topic">It is hard to imagine two individuals who did more to disrupt freight transportation than Fred Smith and Malcom McLean. But that is where the similarities end between the pioneers of express delivery and container shipping. Their respective revolutions redefined transportation but resulted in a wholly divergent set of winners and losers. <div class="wrapper-narrow float-right-element"><img src="/images/phoenix/6040127_0.1.jpg"></img></div>McLean, who died in 2001, was a trucker frustrated by having to wait at the port while cargo was manually loaded. His genius, and why he sits in the pantheon of 20th century business visionaries, was not because he “invented” the shipping container. The container had been identified years before his first ship sailed in 1956 as a method capable of driving out cost, enabling end-to-end transit and reducing theft. Rather, his legacy emerged through the grit and determination required to break through walls of operational complexity and customer skepticism. Smith, <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/fred-smith-fedex-founder-and-visionary-dead-at-80-6029098">who died June 21 at the age of 80</a>, also broke little ground technologically — planes, trucks and warehouses all existed long before FedEx began operations in 1973. Rather, it was physically combining the assets and synching them operationally that created the breakthrough represented by overnight express delivery. What Smith saw, as did McLean, was an untapped market. While McLean saw customers hungry to drive down costs and willing to sacrifice delivery speed to achieve it, Smith spotted a market at the opposite end of the spectrum — one that wanted speed and, at the right price, would be willing to pay for it. The results of their divergent trajectories up and down the value chain could not have been more different. Smith created value — shipping blood samples, legal documents and urgently needed spare parts — and was compensated for doing so. Smith’s model, envisioned in a 1965 paper written at Yale, was validated; FedEx today has half a million employees, a market cap of $55 billion and has expanded into adjacent spaces such as freight forwarding and trucking. Express delivery, moreover, has been proven to be a profitable business for FedEx and others that followed, including UPS and DHL. FedEx is a case study in business benefit. Customers benefit through availability of a needed service and the provider is duly compensated, so everyone wins. Not so in container shipping. <h3>‘Lopsided’ value proposition </h3>The revolution sparked by McLean’s debut of the first container service, operating between Newark and Houston, led instead to a lopsided value proposition. While McLean himself made a fortune when he sold his shipping company, Sea-Land Service Inc. in 1969, the long-term winners in containerization of ocean-going cargo, was not among the shipping companies that followed McLean into containers, but rather their customers, and developing nations such as China. Containers enhanced the opportunity presented by low-cost labor in China with low-cost and efficient shipping, greasing the wheels for mass-relocation of manufacturing beginning in the 1990s. But the shipping companies themselves, moving containers on ever-larger ships, struggled over a span of decades to avoid waves of overcapacity and low freight rates — to the benefit of customers who were more than happy with low costs and largely reliable schedules. The industry earned more profit from 2020 to 2022 during the extreme COVID-19 supply chain disruptions than it did during the entire period between 1956 and 2020, according to data from Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis. And even then, the lopsided value proposition of containers only flipped from one winner to another; ocean carriers’ profits during COVID-19 came at the expense of their customers who suddenly had to endure higher costs, longer delays and inconsistent service. The reliable supply chains on which their international expansion had been based were in tatters. And since COVID-19, the situation for retailers, manufacturers and other users of containerized shipping has only continued. Successive waves of disruption, including the diversion of ships around southern Africa to avoid attacks in the Red Sea, drought in the Panama Canal and upheaval due to the imposition and then retraction of 145% tariffs on China led to even more profits for carriers and yet more problems for supply chains. Anger at ocean carriers led in 2022 to the passage of the first US ocean shipping legislation in nearly 25 years. None of this takes away from McLean’s accomplishment; his refusal to patent his innovation led to the 40-foot container becoming a global standard. But as a lesson in value creation, McLean and Smith offer two very different models. Contact Peter Tirschwell at <a href="mailto:peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com">peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

It is hard to imagine two individuals who did more to disrupt freight transportation than Fred Smith and Malcom McLean. But that is where the similarities end between the pioneers of express delivery and container shipping. Their respective revolutions redefined transportation but resulted in a wholly divergent set of winners and losers. McLean, who died in 2001, was a trucker frustrated by having to wait at the port while cargo was manually loaded. His genius, and why he sits in the pantheon of 20th century business visionaries, was not because he “invented” the shipping container. The container had been identified years before his first ship sailed in 1956 as a method capable of driving out cost, enabling end-to-end transit and reducing theft. Rather, his legacy emerged through the grit and determination required to break through walls of operational complexity and customer skepticism. Smith, who died June 21 at the age of 80 , also broke little ground technologically — planes, trucks and warehouses all existed long before FedEx began operations in 1973. Rather, it was physically combining the assets and synching them operationally that created the breakthrough represented by overnight express delivery. What Smith saw, as did McLean, was an untapped market. While McLean saw customers hungry to drive down costs and willing to sacrifice delivery speed to achieve it, Smith spotted a market at the opposite end of the spectrum — one that wanted speed and, at the right price, would be willing to pay for it. The results of their divergent trajectories up and down the value chain could not have been more different. Smith created value — shipping blood samples, legal documents and urgently needed spare parts — and was compensated for doing so. Smith’s model, envisioned in a 1965 paper written at Yale, was validated; FedEx today has half a million employees, a market cap of $55 billion and has expanded into adjacent spaces such as freight forwarding and trucking. Express delivery, moreover, has been proven to be a profitable business for FedEx and others that followed, including UPS and DHL. FedEx is a case study in business benefit. Customers benefit through availability of a needed service and the provider is duly compensated, so everyone wins. Not so in container shipping. ‘Lopsided’ value proposition The revolution sparked by McLean’s debut of the first container service, operating between Newark and Houston, led instead to a lopsided value proposition. While McLean himself made a fortune when he sold his shipping company, Sea-Land Service Inc. in 1969, the long-term winners in containerization of ocean-going cargo, was not among the shipping companies that followed McLean into containers, but rather their customers, and developing nations such as China. Containers enhanced the opportunity presented by low-cost labor in China with low-cost and efficient shipping, greasing the wheels for mass-relocation of manufacturing beginning in the 1990s. But the shipping companies themselves, moving containers on ever-larger ships, struggled over a span of decades to avoid waves of overcapacity and low freight rates — to the benefit of customers who were more than happy with low costs and largely reliable schedules. The industry earned more profit from 2020 to 2022 during the extreme COVID-19 supply chain disruptions than it did during the entire period between 1956 and 2020, according to data from Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis. And even then, the lopsided value proposition of containers only flipped from one winner to another; ocean carriers’ profits during COVID-19 came at the expense of their customers who suddenly had to endure higher costs, longer delays and inconsistent service. The reliable supply chains on which their international expansion had been based were in tatters. And since COVID-19, the situation for retailers, manufacturers and other users of containerized shipping has only continued. Successive waves of disruption, including the diversion of ships around southern Africa to avoid attacks in the Red Sea, drought in the Panama Canal and upheaval due to the imposition and then retraction of 145% tariffs on China led to even more profits for carriers and yet more problems for supply chains. Anger at ocean carriers led in 2022 to the passage of the first US ocean shipping legislation in nearly 25 years. None of this takes away from McLean’s accomplishment; his refusal to patent his innovation led to the 40-foot container becoming a global standard. But as a lesson in value creation, McLean and Smith offer two very different models. Contact Peter Tirschwell at peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com .

Supply chain

Two legends took divergent paths to supply chain success

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Rhenus Logistics will manage the end-to-end supply chain via a 4PL control tower tailored to the circular textile logistics business.</div>

Rhenus Logistics will manage the end-to-end supply chain via a 4PL control tower tailored to the circular textile logistics business.

<div class="phx-topic">Global clothing retailer H&amp;M Group and German recycling firm Remondis have formed a joint venture company that will tackle the logistics of reusing and recycling up to 150 million garments a year. Looper Textile Co. will collect, sort and enable the processing of used textiles, with German-based forwarder Rhenus Logistics coordinating the transport flows, end-to-end supply chain visibility and creation of a digital 4PL control tower tailored to the circular textile logistics business. “Used textiles are one of the largest material flows in the world,” Simon Bodmer, head of logistics at Remondis Recycling, said in a statement Tuesday announcing the joint venture. He added that digital solutions were crucial for the coordination and movement of the 150 million pieces of clothing to be collected per year. Rhenus will have the overarching responsibility for managing logistics partners and processes within the reuse and recycling system that supports the circular economy and requires full transparency, visibility and data-driven supply chain operations. “Our 4PL control tower provides a central platform for the coordinated and integrated management of all logistics activities and increases visibility along the entire value chain,” said Chris Gerfertz, managing global director at Rhenus 4PL Solutions. The impact of the textile industry on the environment is enormous. Textiles contain many different fibers that make recycling difficult and often impossible when the material consists of blended fibers. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates 92 million metric tons of textile waste is produced globally each year. “Unsustainable fashion is aggravating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature, land and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste,” Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, said in a speech earlier this year. “We need to focus on a circular economy approach that values sustainable production, reuse and repair.” EU rules requiring separate collection of textile waste came into force on Jan. 1, while proposals before the European Parliament include a requirement that producers of textiles products on the European single market should cover the costs of separate collection, sorting and recycling. Contact Greg Knowler at <a href="mailto:greg.knowler@spglobal.com">greg.knowler@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

Global clothing retailer H&M Group and German recycling firm Remondis have formed a joint venture company that will tackle the logistics of reusing and recycling up to 150 million garments a year. Looper Textile Co. will collect, sort and enable the processing of used textiles, with German-based forwarder Rhenus Logistics coordinating the transport flows, end-to-end supply chain visibility and creation of a digital 4PL control tower tailored to the circular textile logistics business. “Used textiles are one of the largest material flows in the world,” Simon Bodmer, head of logistics at Remondis Recycling, said in a statement Tuesday announcing the joint venture. He added that digital solutions were crucial for the coordination and movement of the 150 million pieces of clothing to be collected per year. Rhenus will have the overarching responsibility for managing logistics partners and processes within the reuse and recycling system that supports the circular economy and requires full transparency, visibility and data-driven supply chain operations. “Our 4PL control tower provides a central platform for the coordinated and integrated management of all logistics activities and increases visibility along the entire value chain,” said Chris Gerfertz, managing global director at Rhenus 4PL Solutions. The impact of the textile industry on the environment is enormous. Textiles contain many different fibers that make recycling difficult and often impossible when the material consists of blended fibers. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates 92 million metric tons of textile waste is produced globally each year. “Unsustainable fashion is aggravating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature, land and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste,” Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, said in a speech earlier this year. “We need to focus on a circular economy approach that values sustainable production, reuse and repair.” EU rules requiring separate collection of textile waste came into force on Jan. 1, while proposals before the European Parliament include a requirement that producers of textiles products on the European single market should cover the costs of separate collection, sorting and recycling. Contact Greg Knowler at greg.knowler@spglobal.com .

Fast fashion retailer forms recycling logistics venture to tackle textile waste

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">The just-concluded legislative session also puts aside emergency funding for the Port of Portland that is generated via lottery sales.</div>

The just-concluded legislative session also puts aside emergency funding for the Port of Portland that is generated via lottery sales.

<div class="phx-topic">Oregon’s lawmakers voted to help finance dredging for the development of a new container terminal at the Port of Coos Bay — but only if more federal backing is secured. Legislators also set aside emergency funding that the Port of Portland sought to stave off its closure.The Oregon Legislature’s 2025 session, which ended in late June, included passage of a two-year spending bill that will allow the state to issue up to $100 million in bonds to fund channel deepening and widening for <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/proposed-oregon-container-terminal-among-projects-winning-dot-grants-5764924">the proposed Pacific Coast Intermodal Port (PCIP)</a> container terminal at Coos Bay. The spending bill now awaits Governor Tina Kotek’s signature. The terminal, a joint project of the port and logistics infrastructure developer NorthPoint Development, is designed to handle over 1 million TEUs per year, chiefly serving inland rail markets. The project calls for dredging eight miles of the Coos Bay navigation channel to 45 feet from its current depth of 37 feet, along with widening it from 300 feet to 450 feet. That will allow the PCIP to handle post-Panamax ships up to 13,000 TEUs. The Port of Coos Bay has targeted a 2030 opening for the project. The channel modifications are expected to cost a total of $560 million, according to the Port of Coos Bay. The state can only issue the bonds once the PCIP has received final permitting approval, and the project’s backers have secured $1 billion in railroad improvement financing from the Department of Transportation. The PCIP will require raising tunnel clearances and other improvements on about 120 miles of track that will connect the port to Union Pacific’s rail network. Coos Bay has secured $30 million in various grants toward improving the rail tracks. In addition, <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/proposed-oregon-container-terminal-among-projects-winning-dot-grants-5764924">Coos Bay also received a $25 million grant</a> in 2024 toward the design of the PCIP, which is expected to cost over $2 billion. <h3>Lottery to help fund Portland </h3>A separate bill passed at the end of the 2025 session includes a “Container Port Improvement Fund” that will include $20 million funded through lottery ticket sales. Gov. Kotek had sought <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/oregon-governor-proposes-40-million-to-keep-portland-container-service-alive-5225215">$40 million for the Port of Portland</a> last year after it revealed larger-than-expected financial losses, prompting the port to consider closing its container terminal. The port struck a deal in December for its current stevedore to fully takeover the terminal, a requirement for receiving the grant funding. The bill also sets aside $15 million in state funds for navigation improvements on the Columbia River. Contact Michael Angell at <a href="mailto:michael.angell@spglobal.com">michael.angell@spglobal.com</a>.</div>

Oregon’s lawmakers voted to help finance dredging for the development of a new container terminal at the Port of Coos Bay — but only if more federal backing is secured. Legislators also set aside emergency funding that the Port of Portland sought to stave off its closure. The Oregon Legislature’s 2025 session, which ended in late June, included passage of a two-year spending bill that will allow the state to issue up to $100 million in bonds to fund channel deepening and widening for the proposed Pacific Coast Intermodal Port (PCIP) container terminal at Coos Bay. The spending bill now awaits Governor Tina Kotek’s signature. The terminal, a joint project of the port and logistics infrastructure developer NorthPoint Development, is designed to handle over 1 million TEUs per year, chiefly serving inland rail markets. The project calls for dredging eight miles of the Coos Bay navigation channel to 45 feet from its current depth of 37 feet, along with widening it from 300 feet to 450 feet. That will allow the PCIP to handle post-Panamax ships up to 13,000 TEUs. The Port of Coos Bay has targeted a 2030 opening for the project. The channel modifications are expected to cost a total of $560 million, according to the Port of Coos Bay. The state can only issue the bonds once the PCIP has received final permitting approval, and the project’s backers have secured $1 billion in railroad improvement financing from the Department of Transportation. The PCIP will require raising tunnel clearances and other improvements on about 120 miles of track that will connect the port to Union Pacific’s rail network. Coos Bay has secured $30 million in various grants toward improving the rail tracks. In addition, Coos Bay also received a $25 million grant in 2024 toward the design of the PCIP, which is expected to cost over $2 billion. Lottery to help fund Portland A separate bill passed at the end of the 2025 session includes a “Container Port Improvement Fund” that will include $20 million funded through lottery ticket sales. Gov. Kotek had sought $40 million for the Port of Portland last year after it revealed larger-than-expected financial losses, prompting the port to consider closing its container terminal. The port struck a deal in December for its current stevedore to fully takeover the terminal, a requirement for receiving the grant funding. The bill also sets aside $15 million in state funds for navigation improvements on the Columbia River. Contact Michael Angell at michael.angell@spglobal.com .

Marine terminals

North American ports

Oregon earmarks funds for proposed Coos Bay terminal

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">A plan to tax vehicle carriers $14 per net ton for each US port call will raise consumer costs and reduce the number of ports served, shipping executives warned Monday. </div>

A plan to tax vehicle carriers $14 per net ton for each US port call will raise consumer costs and reduce the number of ports served, shipping executives warned Monday.

<div class="phx-topic">Shipping executives and vehicle and heavy industry manufacturers say a US plan to tax foreign-built, roll-on, roll-off (ro/ro) ships exceeds statutory powers and will hurt the nation’s consumers, ports and manufacturers. The US Trade Representative (USTR) plan would begin Oct. 14 and levy a fee of $14 per net ton on foreign-built vehicle carriers, including ro/ro vessels, as part of a larger effort to blunt China’s shipbuilding dominance. The vehicle carrier industry and its customers successfully <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/car-carrier-operators-face-changes-to-ustr-voyage-fee-plans-6022206">lobbied to blunt USTR’s original tax</a> plan calling for ro/ro operators to be levied $150 per car equivalent. “USTR has gone far beyond its statutory authority under section 301. USTR has offered no rationale for taking action against all vehicle carrier or ro/ro vessels without regard to the nationality of the owner/operator or the origin of the ships that dock in US ports,” Lasse Kristoffersen, president and CEO of Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the world’s biggest car carrier operator, wrote in public comments released Monday. Ro/ro operators would face a fee of about $361,000 per US port call based on an average-sized vehicle carrier, which would be passed on to customers wherever possible, said Kristoffersen. Carriers will reduce the number of US port calls to mitigate the tax, he said, estimating that Wallenius Wilhelmsen would rack up a $137 million annual bill if it mirrored its service network post-tax. Echoing claims that the USTR plan overreaches legally, the heavy industry’s top groups warned that the fees would hit small and medium-sized US manufacturers harder than their larger peers. The reduction in US port calls by carriers to reduce their tax bill would also make it harder for exporters to serve international markets, representatives of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and Associated Equipment Distributors wrote in a joint letter. The South Korean government suggested that the tax on ro/ro vessels should be capped at a single port call per service, much like how the tonnage tax for <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/revised-china-tonnage-tax-less-disruptive-still-costly-6005402">container ships was amended</a> from the original draft. “Therefore, the Korean government requests that the same limitation — a maximum of five port entry fees charges per vessel per year [for container ships] — be applied to vehicle carriers as well,” wrote the ministries of trade, industry and energy, and oceans and fisheries, in a joint letter. Contact Keith Wallis at <a href="mailto:keithwallis@hotmail.com">keithwallis@hotmail.com</a>. </div>

Shipping executives and vehicle and heavy industry manufacturers say a US plan to tax foreign-built, roll-on, roll-off (ro/ro) ships exceeds statutory powers and will hurt the nation’s consumers, ports and manufacturers. The US Trade Representative (USTR) plan would begin Oct. 14 and levy a fee of $14 per net ton on foreign-built vehicle carriers, including ro/ro vessels, as part of a larger effort to blunt China’s shipbuilding dominance. The vehicle carrier industry and its customers successfully lobbied to blunt USTR’s original tax plan calling for ro/ro operators to be levied $150 per car equivalent. “USTR has gone far beyond its statutory authority under section 301. USTR has offered no rationale for taking action against all vehicle carrier or ro/ro vessels without regard to the nationality of the owner/operator or the origin of the ships that dock in US ports,” Lasse Kristoffersen, president and CEO of Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the world’s biggest car carrier operator, wrote in public comments released Monday. Ro/ro operators would face a fee of about $361,000 per US port call based on an average-sized vehicle carrier, which would be passed on to customers wherever possible, said Kristoffersen. Carriers will reduce the number of US port calls to mitigate the tax, he said, estimating that Wallenius Wilhelmsen would rack up a $137 million annual bill if it mirrored its service network post-tax. Echoing claims that the USTR plan overreaches legally, the heavy industry’s top groups warned that the fees would hit small and medium-sized US manufacturers harder than their larger peers. The reduction in US port calls by carriers to reduce their tax bill would also make it harder for exporters to serve international markets, representatives of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and Associated Equipment Distributors wrote in a joint letter. The South Korean government suggested that the tax on ro/ro vessels should be capped at a single port call per service, much like how the tonnage tax for container ships was amended from the original draft. “Therefore, the Korean government requests that the same limitation — a maximum of five port entry fees charges per vessel per year [for container ships] — be applied to vehicle carriers as well,” wrote the ministries of trade, industry and energy, and oceans and fisheries, in a joint letter. Contact Keith Wallis at keithwallis@hotmail.com .

Ro/ro cargo

USTR plan to tax ro/ro ships exceeds statutory authority: stakeholders

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

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Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

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